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Sometimes the right answer is to walk away, sometimes it is to give them your wallet... When is it time to leg it?
Always. You always need to get away.
If you're going to try to walk away, you need to make sure you can keep them in your sight until you're at a safe distance. Distance is determined by the threat of their weapon's reach. If they are ...

Sam Harris wrote a good article on the principles of self defense. In summary (quotes are from the article linked):
Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places.
“What are you looking at, asshole?”
“Sorry, man. I was just spacing out. It’s been a long day.”
De-escalate and move on.
Principle #2: Do not defend your ...

You should first consider whether you can run away. No point in turning you back to the adversary unless you're quite sure he won't get you.
Me, with my weight and bad knee, it would take an old mugger in a wheelchair before I'd consider this option :)

Here are the basic principles I've been taught in regards to self defense:
Be vigilant. The sooner you see the attacker approach, you better you can prepare for it--and even better avoid the situation entirely.
Never assume the attacker is alone--even if you can't see their friends.
Never hand the money to them, always drop it on the ground. If they bend ...

Yes.
If you are in a kata-based art, practice your least-favorite kata until you start noticing it pop up in your daily life (opening doors a certain way, stepping to dodge someone in a crowded area just like in the kata). You pick your least-favorite because it is most likely to move you out of your comfort zone. Don't force it though. As you practice, ...

From what I've heard, most of the self defence classes teach students to just hand over the money to the mugger and ask the mugger to spare their lives. They say it's not worth fighting for some bucks when it's the matter of your life itself. I kinda incline to agree with them.
Since muggers will be aiming for the money we've, I think it's ok to hand over ...

Basically it is time to get the fudge out of Dodge when you are in a situation you cannot handle. There are many variables that go in to determining when that moment is, and there is no formula for it (otherwise everyone would know that formula). It is something you learn from experience and from following your gut feeling (intuition).
Should you hand your ...

Some great answers here already, but I'll just add that where I used to train, we had a set of "self defence" techniques.
Self Defence #1: Run away.
It's the first thing all students were taught there.
So the answer to your question would be: run away at the first possible opportunity.

There are a lot of good answers and advices for the cases when you already are in trouble. I think martial arts develop an extra sense for danger, which you should use to avoid problems. The best case is that you never need to defend yourself with force.
Unfortunately you can always find yourself in bad situation, no matter how careful you are. I follow ...

I have completed the following drills before sparring. I can say that they work very well to put you in a more creative mode of thought. Repeat these drills before sparring.
Take a partner and a tennis ball (or anything you can throw to the other person). Face each other at a distance of about 1 metre. The first person throws the ball and calls "left" or ...

A few good and bad answers here. I completely disagree with the ones saying running is always the best thing to do.
Imagine:
someone attacks you without warning; you're under attack before you can even react.
--do you run? Once the guy is in-close you would probably better off at least giving yourself some time to run, like punching or creating several ...

Fixation is a natural part of the way we train new techniques and new forms. When you practice, you say, "Okay, I'm going to work on XYZ kata." or "I'm going to train ABC technique now." We then proceed to drill the technique repeatedly.
This is good training at a very low level, but it's something that needs to be abandoned at a point. In my estimation, ...

Trying to come up with a checklist of when you should run away is impossible. By myself is one situation, with my 16 year old son another, my girlfriend with bad knees is another, with my 75 year old mom that is out of shape is still another. Then where am I? How many people do I know I'm facing?
Each situation is unique and has to be approached as such. ...